lance; while the star kept coruscating on Feathertop's breast, and
the little demons careered with more frantic merriment than ever about
the circumference of his pipe bowl. O pretty Polly Gookin, why should
these imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden's heart was about to be
given to a shadow! Is it so unusual a misfortune, so rare a triumph?

By and by Feathertop paused, and throwing himself into an imposing
attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his figure and
resist him longer if she could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles
glowed at that instant with unutterable splendor; the picturesque hues
of his attire took a richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and
polish over his whole presence betokening the perfect witchery of
well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to
linger upon her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if
desirous of judging what value her own simple comeliness might have
side by side with so much brilliancy, she cast a glance towards the
full-length looking-glass in front of which they happened to be
standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world and incapable of
flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly's eye
than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger's side, gazed at him for a
moment in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor.
Feathertop likewise had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld,
not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the
sordid patchwork of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.

The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms with
an expression of despair that went further than any of his previous
manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human, for
perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of
mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized
itself.

Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this
eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she
heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the
tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of
dry bones.

"Ha!" thought the old witch, "what step is that? Whose skeleton is out
of its grave now, I wonder?"

A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. It was Feathertop! His
pipe was still alight; the star still flamed u